What’s an opener among playmates?

ARTIST Marla Olmstead does gallery openings her way.

When the 6-year-old painter’s new solo show at the storefront A StuART Gallery in Encino opened June 24, she wasn’t impressed that her boldly colored canvases were hanging on the walls and being praised by her adult fans.

Instead, it was party time. A chance to eat goodies, teeter around in Mom’s high heels and play with her little brother and the gallery owners’ grandchildren on the expansive wood floor -- just right for a game of ball, according to Marla’s mom, Laura Olmstead.

After all, “it’s fun in a big, open space to roll a ball on the floor,” she observed last week, and her daughter -- whose often large-scale paintings have been written about in Time magazine and reported on by CBS News and are said to have sold for tens of thousands of dollars -- “really couldn’t care less about the occasion.”

“She was just as proud when her work was in the hallway in her kindergarten along with all her playmates’.”

Painting “is her greatest form of expressing herself,” Olmstead added, speaking by phone as the family, including dad Mark and 4-year-old brother, Zane, headed out for a vacation trip to Marin County before returning to their Binghamton, N.Y., home. “We don’t want to ruin it by dissecting it or making it seem too important. She should enjoy herself and be free to do what she wants.”

So, let the adults munch on cheese, sip wine and talk art. Cookies and ice cream from a real ice cream truck and staying up considerably past bedtime -- till 11 -- are way more exciting for this much-feted little painter, her mom said. “It’s just one big play date, these openings, which is as it should be.”

-- Lynne Heffley